Rescuers in race against time to find quake survivors

RESCUERS raced to pull survivors from collapsed buildings and deliver urgently needed food and water yesterday as strong aftershocks rattled earthquake-devastated islands in northern Indonesia.

Nearly three days after the huge quake, several people were pulled alive from the rubble, but they were greatly outnumbered by the dead as aid officials warned the toll could rise as rescuers reach remote areas.

French firefighters in worst-affected Nias island pulled a woman alive from the rubble of her home yesterday. Rescuers also pulled an 11-year-old boy from the wreckage of a five-storey building.

Three or four international rescue teams, Singaporeans and volunteers from places such as Norway, along with hundreds of Indonesian troops are scouring the rubble looking for survivors.

As many as 2,000 people are feared to have died, many of them trapped under the rubble, according to Indonesian officials. A UN statement said some 500 were confirmed killed.

Several hundred people are reported to have died on the isolated Banyak island group just north of Nias. Simeulue island, also to the north of Nias, suffered widespread damage as well.

Aid officials said relief supplies were flowing better yesterday, but water and food remained in short supply and many roads were impassable.

“There’s very little water and people are panicking,” Jude Barrand, spokeswoman for aid agency SurfAid International, said from northern Medan city.

“They’re hungry, there’s no food. The market was destroyed.”

The UN’s World Food Programme estimated 200,000 Nias residents would need food aid for about two months.

The International Organisation for Migration, which is sending 25 truck-loads of food and other relief supplies to the island, said nearly 20,000 people were without drinking water. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, facing his second major disaster after December’s Indian Ocean tsunami left more than 220,000 Indonesians dead or missing, arrived on Nias yesterday and told residents his government would help them. “I take responsibility, I am strong, I will keep doing my duty as a president,” he said.

At least three aftershocks rocked the area off the west coast of Sumatra island, one of them measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, fraying survivors’ nerves. Hungry survivors who fled to the hills for fear of massive waves similar to the Indian Ocean tsunami that struck the area were returning to the main town of Gunungsitoli in Nias.

But many were too scared to stay inside buildings.

“For the last two days we have been staying up in the mountains,” civil servant Ama Rori, 50, said.

He and his family are staying under a tarpaulin.

Grieving residents buried friends and relatives in makeshift coffins.